Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-24-Speech-3-357"
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"en.20080924.33.3-357"2
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"Madam President, first I would like to thank the honourable Member of Parliament for his congratulations, but I would like to pass his congratulations on to Parliament, because Parliament, in a very difficult situation with five directives on the table on very complicated matters, has done a wonderful job. I might not agree 100% on everything Parliament has voted, but what Parliament has done today is put the single market for telecoms on the agenda. Now the Council has to look at what Parliament has proposed and try to find a common way in order to make this telecom package become a reality for industry and consumers.
With regard to the question on roaming, is there not a risk that, because we bring down prices on roaming, the operators try to raise prices in another way? We already heard last year, when we introduced the voice roaming package, that the operators would be forced to raise the national cost for voice mobiles, but what we saw was just the contrary. So what happened? Firstly, citizens, instead of switching off their phones when they are abroad, are now using them. So the volume on voice has gone up tremendously, by 34% in one year only.
Secondly, because there is competition at national level, national prices have not risen but have gone down by 10-12%. The honourable Member recalls the polemics which were going on at a certain time about ‘bill and keep’. It is up to the operators what kind of billing system they want to adopt. Our European way of doing it is not to use ‘bill and keep’. That is the American way of doing it. I have just seen that prices in the United States are lower than prices here, and I told the operator very clearly that they should choose their business model. It is not for the Commissioner to do that, but they have to be on terms with their customers. The only thing that concerns me is that there is transparency, that prices do not go above price limits which are unacceptable, and that all European consumers can feel at home when they are travelling in Europe and when they are communicating in Europe.
Regarding the question on inadvertent roaming: yes, we are aware of this. Coming from Luxembourg, you can imagine how many complaints I receive from consumers on this question, because some Luxembourgers living in a border area have one operator in the living room, another one in the kitchen and a third in the bedroom, so I am fully aware of this question. That is why we have raised this question with the national regulators, and we are monitoring this problem with the European Regulators Group. We will also continue to do so with the national regulators. We have also increased the transparency initiatives for data and SMS on the package which is now on the table in the European Parliament. There have already been some positive developments concerning this inadvertent roaming, for instance in Ireland, with good work done on both sides of the border. I think that is a positive way to see it, and I think that the operators also should be very conscious of the fact of inadvertent roaming. Even if it is only a very small percentage of the population which suffers as a result of this question, it is the responsibility of the operators to try to solve the problem."@en1
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